UCC, which urged lifting ban on gays in military in 1993, sees vindication

 
In a letter from Obama released December 22 at the bill’s signing, the President said: “Gay and lesbian service members – brave Americans who enable our freedoms – will no longer have to hide who they are.”  Before the law signing, Obama encouraged once-discharged military personnel to reenlist: “We will be honored to welcome you into the ranks.”
 
The United Church of Christ noted in its 1993 synod resolution that the Cleveland-based denomination, which has about 1.2 million members in autonomous congregations, had pioneered the ordination of openly gay ministers decades earlier. Its General Synod of 1975 affirmed “the full participation of gays and lesbians in church and society.” The UCC Coalition for LGBT Concerns rejoiced alongside like-minded ecumenical groups in the surprising vote to repeal that included several Republican Senators.
 
“Last weekend’s dramatic reversal vote was a vindication of decades of hard work, including courage and self-sacrifice of women and men in uniform who risked their careers to fight for equal dignity,” said Andrew Lang, the coalition’s interim executive director. (He is now the permanent executive director.) Retired navy chaplain John F. Gundlach, the UCC’s minister for governmental chaplaincies, has long opposed the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, according to a UCC news release. In a blog last May, Gundlach and two UCC chaplains said that chaplains who, on religious grounds, oppose homosexuality and openly gay service members do themselves and the armed forces a disservice…. “If chaplains cannot care without discrimination, they need to leave institutional ministry and return to a more parochial setting.”
 
The UCC Coalition of LGBT Concerns raised another issue – one not commonly mentioned in policy debates and news accounts. Transgender citizens “still face hurdles when they choose to serve their country,” Lang said. “While this day will go down in history as a decisive day forward for the LGBT community … we cannot allow the moment to obscure the fact that transgender citizens, too, deserve and must have equal protection under the law in the military and in all walks of life.”
 
Copyright @ 2011 by the Christian Century. Reprinted by permission from the January 25, 2011 issue
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